Blah ,Blah ,Blah

You know...I didn't really want to talk about Rick Santorum...Our state's (Pennsylvania) former senator, who was booted out of office because at the time...he was too extreme for even the Republicans....This was back when Republican candidates were just conservative , but not crackhouse rat crazy...

Last week Rick Santorum told an Iowa audience "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn money."  I went stark raving mad when I heard this....Facebook and Twitter was buzzing with commentary condemning him and calling for his head.

Then I got ahold of myself....The man is just stupid...Haven't I been saying that for years???...Why am I in such a froth???...This is nothing new or shocking...He has said worse for years...In fact ,it's good that he's showing his true colors...Let people see who they're voting for and let's see how they vote!


NAACP President (and my frat brother!) Benjamin Jealous denounced the comments as "outrageous," and even Fox News host Bill O'Reilly had to remind Santorum that his comments were specious when you consider that "most of the people, as you know, on welfare are white people." Then Santorum made the whole thing worse by denying that he'd even said "black" and insisting instead that what he'd actually said was "blah."

Blah, indeed.Really? Blah!

You know..It's really bad when Bill O'Reilly has to tell you that you just spoke out of term...When Bill O'Reilly has to tell you that mostly white people are on Welfare....Oh My God...See how extreme and crazy this man is?

In this weekend's Saturday-and-Sunday New Hampshire primary-debate double-header, if he doesn't take the opportunity to -- in Senate-speak -- revise and extend his thoughts on blacks and welfare,(In other words...straighten that ish out!!) he'll just wind up being the latest in a long line of GOP politicians who not only can't connect with the black vote, but can't even make a convincing case that they've tried. Santorum tried -- and absolutely failed -- to articulate a position that you hear all the time from black conservatives: that government assistance hurts African Americans over the long term. The problem for Santorum is that it doesn't sound as if he truly understands that message.(Or for that matter, anything!)

Black economist Walter Williams has said that "the welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do." And at his Twitter town hall meeting last year, President Obama recounted how, "as somebody who worked in low-income neighborhoods, I've seen it where people weren't encouraged to work, weren't encouraged to upgrade their skills, were just getting a check, and over time their motivation started to diminish." The concept of welfare dependency really isn't news.

I'm not totally against the idea that dependence on welfare and relief can in time destroy the work ethic...but when there are few jobs for people who weren't on it in the first place...what is a person to do? This is where the conservatives and I come to a fork in our road.

But even if you give Rick Santorum the benefit of the doubt (and I certainly am not)-- that he's encouraging lower-income African Americans to strive for prosperity -- that careless line about welfare still doesn't wash. It sounds more like he heard it somewhere and figured it was OK to conflate that sentiment with the prevailing view among many (WHITE)Republicans that the bloated "nanny state" is the cause of all the nation's economic woes.

If, instead, Rick Santorum meant to pander to people who want to believe that everything from the mortgage crisis to the national debt can be blamed on blacks and other minorities living on the government dole, then he'll have shown himself to be unworthy of the office of president.

And furthermore, if he was trying to convince African Americans -- or anybody else -- that they ought to consider voting for him by singling out black welfare recipients in an election year that's mostly going to wind up as a referendum on big-ticket issues like Medicare and national defense, then that's a strange way to do it, but we talkin about a strange man!

Rick Santorum has always been the candidate whose signature issues best mirrored the themes of the conservative movement over the last three decades. His hawkish posture on Iran, his antipathy to gay rights and his economic populist message most closely mirror the "three-legged stool" of contemporary American conservatism outlined by William F. Buckley Jr. and embodied by the "great communicator" Ronald Reagan. The old "welfare queen" riff was part of that too!

If Rick Santorum wants to be taken seriously when he insists that he didn't mean any harm and says that he's "proud of my record" working with the black community, (what record is that?)he should take the time to explain why he believes that black communities are poorly served by government assistance, or make clear that his economic message applies to all Americans -- black or otherwise. If all he can muster is a claim that what he really meant to say was "blah" -- not black -- it won't make him look bigoted. It'll just make him look like a damned fool.

And to that I say...Blah...Blahhhhh...Blahhhhhh!